I have a very solemn message for us
today, friends, and most of you aren't gonna
like it.
Years ago, I was preaching in a church
where the pastor approached me afterwards and said,
when I preach to my people, they leave
the church talking and laughing, but when you
preach to them, they leave the church silent
and with red eyes.
Well, I didn't know how to answer that
pastor, but I let my messages do the
talking.
I felt led to preach to his people
out of Amos, which I knew was a
need to them because they were a divided
church on the verge of a church split,
and they needed to repent and return back
to God.
And I'm going to preach to us today,
friends, out of Amos.
And you can turn in your Bibles there
now, friends, as I believe this book of
Amos has a lot to say to us
today.
The name Amos means burden, and that's what
this prophet of God had, a burden for
the people of Israel to return back to
Almighty God, but is pleased to repent when
unheeded because it was a time of peace
and prosperity.
Amos had an unpopular message that few wanted
to hear.
The Jews were enjoying a prosperous reign under
Jeroboam II, and it was a time when
the nation was at the peak of Israel's
material and political success.
But this prosperity had caused the people to
forget God.
And this was the burden that Amos carried
around with him, for he saw the destruction
that would soon befall them if they failed
to repent.
This occurred through a series of remedial judgments
from God.
The fiery prophet Amos burst on the scene
right before a big earthquake shook that entire
region of Palestine.
In Amos 1, we read, The words of
Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa,
which he saw concerning Israel in the days
of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of
Israel, two years before the earthquake.
This earthquake must have been pretty severe because
it is mentioned by Zachariah.
More than 200 years later, Amos had been
preaching a message of repentance to the backslidden
nation that refused to turn back to God.
God first sent them a series of remedial
judgments through some natural calamities as a wake
-up call to them.
Amos 3, 6 declares, Shall there be calamity
in a city?
And the Lord hath not done it.
God in his mercy sent a series of
remedial judgments to his rebellious people in the
form of several calamities which grew in their
severity.
We see this in Amos 4, beginning in
verse 6.
And I also have given you cleanness of
teeth in all your cities, and want of
bread in all your places.
Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith
the Lord.
Judgment number one was that God sent a
famine in the land.
In his mercy, he sent them a famine.
But how did the people respond?
Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith
the Lord.
The next judgment is a little more severe.
We see in verse 7.
And also I have withholding the rain from
you, when there were yet three months to
the harvest, and that caused it to rain
upon one city, and caused it not to
rain upon another city.
One piece was rained upon, and the piece
whereupon it rained not withered.
God sent a drought to his disobedient people.
You can go weak without food, friends, but
man cannot live long without water.
Did the people repent?
No.
Yet have ye not returned unto me.
So God sends them a more devastating calamity.
Look at verse 9.
I have smitten you with blasting and mildew,
when your gardens and your vineyards and your
fig trees and your olive trees increased.
The palmer worm devoured them.
Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith
the Lord.
God sent them a financial collapse.
Our economy grows weaker by the day.
The stock market is highly overvalued and overdue
for severe correction.
God could suddenly pull the rug out from
our economy, and the markets could crash, and
people could be wiped out financially.
Look at what happened in 2008, and our
situation now is more fragile than it was
back then because of the pandemic.
But did Israel repent?
No.
So God sent an even more severe calamity
among them.
Look at verse 10.
I have sent among you the pestilence after
the manor of Egypt.
Your young men have I slain with the
sword, and have taken away your horses.
And I have made the stink of your
camps to come up unto your nostrils.
Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith
the Lord.
God sent his death angel among them, to
where things got so bad, because so many
had been killed, that the stench of rotten
corpses filled their nostrils.
Did they return to God?
No.
They refused to repent.
God is telling America, I have sent you
fires, and yet have you not returned unto
me.
I have sent you America floods, and yet
have you not returned unto me.
America, I have sent you storms of wind
and hurricanes, yet have you not returned unto
me, saith the Lord.
America, I have allowed the death angel to
slay 200,000 by a plague, and yet
have you not returned unto me, saith the
Lord.
The modern church in America is so out
of step with God, that they can't even
hear his voice.
We live in a day of moral depravity
in society, and great spiritual declension in the
church.
The church has become nothing more than a
dead institution, hell-bent on church growth.
Pastors fail to preach against sin, and warn
their hearers about damnation and hell.
All you hear today are nice little messages
that don't offend anyone, or you'll hear an
intellectual essay to be considered.
The icy blast from today's church is deadening,
but pastors in former generations spent all their
time on their knees and in their Bibles,
and not sitting in front of a TV
screen watching ball games.
When a natural disaster hit their community, they
were quick to preach a solemn message on
repentance to their people, listened to a sermon
titled by a leading pastor of Boston in
1755, when an earthquake shook that city, listened,
friends, to the title of his sermon.
Earthquakes, the works of God, and tokens of
his just displeasure, being a discourse on that
subject wherein is given a particular description of
this awful event of providence made public at
this time, on occasion of the late dreadful
earthquake which happened on the 18th of November,
1755.
The text of the sermon was Psalm 18,
7.
Then the earth shook and trembled, the foundations
also of the hills moved, and were shaken,
because he was wroth.
When almighty God is wroth, he's trying to
get the attention of a rebellious people.
He will send natural calamities to them, one
on the heels of another, in order to
get them to return back to him.
If the remedial judgments go unheeded and the
people refuse to repent, then a glistening, blood
-red sword of Damocles will hang over that
nation, ready to descend at any moment.
Heaven help us all.